


There Was Magic Abroad In The Air

by jessthereckless



Series: It's Not The End Of The World, Dear [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Sex, Angel/Demon Sex, Aziraphale has a sex notebook now, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Crowley owns houseplants with more self awareness than his life partner, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Evil Cuddling, Historical References, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Stage Magic, The Hundred Guineas Club, no seriously, sexual fantasies, the thirst statue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 15:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19975996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessthereckless/pseuds/jessthereckless
Summary: “Oh, I should never have left you alone in the nineteenth century. Music hall, magic, incredibly expensive gay clubs. All your most embarrassing impulses were just left to scamper around unchecked”Stage magic is about the art of deception, making it unsuitable – if not actually impossible – for those of an angelic nature. Over a century later, Aziraphale believes himself to be a much more adept liar than he used to be, but when he looks through his old thwarting ledgers he’s surprised to discover the identity of the person he’s been consistently deceiving for the past six thousand years.Companion piece to Still My Heart Has Wings.





	There Was Magic Abroad In The Air

This was not proper demonic activity. Even Crowley had admitted that much, but he would have his fun all the same. 

“Nineteen thirty-seven,” he’d said, proudly displaying the prize in his palm. “Thrupenny bit. Check it out. Edward VIII.” 

“Oh my. He reigned for less than a year.” 

“Yup. Means they didn’t have time to mint that many coins. Which bumps the price up considerably. This little predecimal coin? Now retails for around forty-five grand. Only ten of them said to be in existence—” 

“—and one of them is about to be superglued to a paving slab outside my shop?” 

“That’s what I love about you, angel. You’re sharp.” 

“Or just accustomed your wiles,” Aziraphale had said, and gone to make a cup of tea. 

Aziraphale had made many notes over the centuries, filed in duplicate and submitted to head office. At first they’d been fairly routine – healed leper, blessed crops, drove out demons and so on – but as time wore on and the more often he kept bumping into Crowley, the more he left out of his reports. Yes, he still drove out demons, but what he didn’t write in his report was that he had driven _a_ demon out of a very insalubrious tavern in Jerusalem. And it had been for the demon’s own good, because the demon had just said something complimentary about Saladin, within earshot of a reeking, angry, sunburned Crusader. 

“All I said was that they had much better bathing facilities in Baghdad,” Crowley had said. “And they know how to dress for the weather. None of this clanking about in chain mail. No wonder they’re all so bad tempered. I’d be annoyed if I smelled like that, too.” 

Aziraphale’s initial report had simply read: _Successful exorcism of demon from tavern in Jerusalem._ After giving it the once over and squirming slightly about the things he’d left out, he had added a few notes on the tavern itself ( _Unpleasant ambience. Combative clientele. Would not recommend._ ) but left out the part where he and Crowley had found a much nicer tavern and enjoyed some really superb falafels. 

As the centuries wore on, Aziraphale had squirmed less and padded more. For example, the open ledger in front of him – a heavy seventeenth century volume – contained an entire crossed out entry in handwriting he recognised as his own, but had no recollection of actually writing. 

_Wiles – 1, Thwartings – 1. Call it a draw if you really, really absolutely must, but to be quite honest I have so many better things to do than keep up this merry bloody dance. Like dancing. I could be learning to dance right now, but oh no – I don’t get to have any fun. We may as well still be living under Crowmell for all the fuc…_

It ended there in an inkblot. Presumably ‘Crowmell’ was ‘Cromwell’, since the entry was dated Christmas Day 1661. Good times, after a long series of awful ones. The theatres were open again, Christmas was uncancelled and everyone had a ravenous appetite for fun. Crowley had wanted to go to the theatre to watch a play whose name neither of them could remember any more, but had probably been called something like _The Buxom Bride_ and whose plot had been concerned with sex, intrigue, more sex and the travails of one character whose entire plotline was the loss of his trousers and subsequent nudity.* 

Aziraphale’s pique in this particular instance had been due to the Upstairs insistence that the moral pendulum in London was swinging too far in the opposite direction, and that this had been due to inadequate wile thwarting on Aziraphale’s part. In reality, Crowley hadn’t even been in London for most of the Interregnum. He’d been hanging around Venice, getting suntanned and drunk, and trying to encourage promising young composers to sell their souls to Satan for the purposes of hype. He’d only dropped by to give Aziraphale a bottle of Torcolato wine, and now Aziraphale was being blamed for not thwarting him properly when Crowley hadn’t even been wiling in the same damn country. 

The official entry in Aziraphale’s ledger for the 25th December 1661 read: _Spent several hours thwarting wiles at the theatre. Merry Christmas!_

What it didn’t mention was that Crowley had felt sorry for him and – instead of going to watch the dirty play – had stood by Aziraphale’s side _outside_ of the theatre and helped him hand out improving pamphlets about the dangers of risqué dramas. 

“Well, it’s no fun going on my own, is it?” Crowley had said. 

“I know, but you wanted to see that play. And now it will probably close.” 

“Will it?” Crowley had said. “You know what happens when people stand outside theatres shouting about how disgusting a play is?” 

“Oh.” 

" _Yes_. You’ve effectively just blessed the box office.” 

“So you say you’re helping, but you’re actually wiling right now?” 

“Yep. And you’re thwarting. And it is – as it ever was – completely pointless.” 

A small crowd had gathered outside the shop. Crowley watched them with the avid expression of a cat watching a bird feeder through the window. Just as cats sometimes chattered while watching birds, the entertainment wrung uncharacteristic noises from Crowley, a deep closed-mouth giggle that bubbled in the back of his throat and terminated in a softer version of the creaking honks that punctuated his full-throated laugh. 

“Aziraphale…” He beckoned, not taking his eyes from the window. “Come on…you gotta see this…it’s getting good. They’re talking about taking a crowbar to the pavement now.” 

Aziraphale stirred and wandered over to the window. The shouting hadn’t started in earnest yet, but the gesticulations were becoming increasingly violent. It was a silly trick and an old one, one that – Crowley explained – had been made a lot more accessible by the advent of smart phones. In the old days, Crowley had used to have to loaf around on the corner and unsubtly point out that the coin was valuable, but these days all he had to do was make it shine a bit brighter than others and wait for someone to Google (whatever that was, exactly) the price of a 1937 brass three penny piece. 

“It’s very childish,” said Aziraphale. “Leading people astray like that.” 

“Oh, don’t be so pious. You’re a fine one to talk about coin tricks.” 

“Crowley, if this nonsense spills over into my bookshop I’m not going to be happy. It’s almost closing time.” 

Crowley frowned at his watch. “It’s half past two.” 

“Yes?” 

“You closed for lunch at one. I wasn’t even aware you’d opened back up.” 

Aziraphale squinted over his glasses on the sign on the door. “Oh, you’re quite right. I didn’t.” He sighed. “Look, they can see you grinning out of the window. For goodness’ sake, stop toying with them.” 

He put away the old ledger. There were shelves of them, right up to the date of his recent unemployment. And beyond. Some old habits lingered on longer than others, and for a while afterwards Aziraphale had found himself writing reports that would never be filed. Doing so had filled him with a vague unease as to the state of his own sanity, but over six thousand years of worrying about his own disobedient nature had kept him at it, even as a small, as-yet-unformed part of him was quietly screaming that he was sleepwalking the metaphorical battlements like Lady Macbeth. 

Slow to self-awareness as he was, it had taken him the best part of a year, but Aziraphale remembered the night he’d finally cracked. He’d had an excellent dinner with Crowley at a _meze_ place where they served the most delicious baba ganoush that Aziraphale had ever tasted. There had been a lot of wine and baklava and the piping hot, sweet, gritty coffee that Crowley adored. As the evening rolled on they’d laughed louder and their gazes had lingered longer. 

A near miss, that night. Aziraphale’s heart had beat strangely as he stood on the doorstep. “Are you coming in?” he’d said, and there had been a moment – a long, breathless, vibrating moment – between the question and the answer. And in that moment it had seemed like it would be the most natural thing in the world for Crowley to reach out, grab Aziraphale’s collar and offer up a wordless answer that would have seen them fumbling and stumbling their way to the couch like they’d wanted to do for…oh, forever, it seemed like. 

“I…ah…no,” Crowley had said, instead. “Got stuff to do. You know,” and Aziraphale had said of course and gone inside in a kind of daze. A daze where he had taken out his ledger and recounted the events of the evening. Wiles thwarted, and so on. 

He had written several pages before stopping and realising that he’d written nothing about wiles and instead had written exclusively about how much he’d enjoyed the evening, about what Crowley had worn and how he’d smiled and all the amusing things he’d said. And that was the moment when it happened, when that small, quietly screaming voice inside Aziraphale had reached a frequency and volume that could no longer be ignored. It took one look at the pages in front of him, groaned in exhausted disgust and said aloud – with his voice and his lips – “Oh for God’s sake, just masturbate. What on _earth_ is wrong with you?” 

That was the night he’d made the decision to stop writing reports. He had also made the decision to seduce Crowley. 

The crowd outside the bookshop had dispersed. Crowley – who had somehow put a stop to the whole business, using methods Aziraphale knew it was best not to ask about – was lying on his back on the big circular rug in the middle of the rotunda. He was tossing the rare coin up into the air over and over. “Heads or tails?” he said, as he had a thousand or more times before, and the coin hung there, flipping over in mid air. 

“Tails.” 

The coin landed in Crowley’s palm. “Ah. It’s heads. You lose.” 

“What do I lose? I wasn’t aware there was anything to play for.” 

Crowley patted the rug beside him. “You have to come down here now. Come on.” 

“What? On the floor?” 

“Yes. I need company. Come on. Down you come.” 

Aziraphale complied. “You’ll do just about anything to get me horizontal these days, won’t you?” 

Crowley leaned in and gently nipped his shoulder through layers of shirt and cardigan. “Why not? That’s when we have the most fun.” He reached for Aziraphale’s hand and pressed the coin into it. “Show me.” 

“Show you what?” 

“Your magic trick.” 

“You hate my magic tricks.” 

“I don’t _hate_ them. I’m just curious as to why you love them so much.” Crowley, still catlike, rubbed his cheek against Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I’ve seen you turn water into wine. Walk on water. _Fly_.” 

Aziraphale thought back to those nights of wonder and limelight at Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. The small exhibition space with its shallow stage, the winged scarabs on the elaborate ceiling, and the flicker of limelight. He’d seen humans float there, seen disembodied heads speak from the inside of open boxes on tables. All quite astonishing, and all…frantic, somehow. He’d had such good times there, but there’d always been a sort of desperation about them. Like the way he and Crowley had hit the bottle when they found out that they only had eleven years to Armageddon. 

“It’s hard to explain,” he said, and placed the coin in his hand. Ah, the twentieth century thrupenny bits. They’d always been good for this. They had a bevelled edge and a pleasing chunkiness, nice and easy to grip. He hadn’t done this in a while. It had used to be something he’d do to amuse himself when he was alone, but he was so seldom alone these days. 

His fingers were clumsy. The coin almost rolled off onto the floor. He had visions of himself firing it across the room or accidentally dropping it down a crack in the floorboards. “Are you sure you want to do this with such an expensive coin?” he said. 

“There are nine more of them,” said Crowley. “Teach me.” 

“All right. Give me your hand. Back towards me. That’s it.” Aziraphale placed the coin over the knuckles of Crowley’s ring and middle fingers. “Now…while I hold that there, flex your other two fingers backwards against the edges to hold it in place. You see? That’s it. Now turn your hand over.” 

Crowley presented the front of his hand, apparently empty. “And then what?” he said. “I flip it like…that?” He got it the first time, the simple shuffle of knuckles and fingers that returned the coin to visibility. “That’s _it_?” 

“That’s it.” 

Crowley gave him a long, pitying look. “Oh, I should never have left you alone in the nineteenth century,” he said. “Music hall, magic, incredibly expensive gay clubs…all your most embarrassing impulses were just left to scamper around unchecked.” 

“It serves you right for sulking,” said Aziraphale. 

“I was not sulking.” 

“You were.” 

“Wasn’t.” 

“Was.” Aziraphale watched as Crowley tried to position the coin once again. “No, your fingers are too far back. I can see the coin.” 

“I can always see the coin when you do it.” 

“No, you can’t.” 

“I can.” Crowley vanished the coin again. He was annoyingly good at it already. “It’s childish,” he said, with a flick of his long fingers that made it reappear and then vanish again. “Leading people astray like that.” He nuzzled closer, the tip of his tongue tracing the edge of Aziraphale’s ear. The coin popped back into view in mid air and landed on Aziraphale’s waistcoat. 

“Cheat,” said Aziraphale. 

“Demon,” said Crowley, biting gently on an earlobe. The full length of his thigh rubbed against Aziraphale’s. “So what’s next? You stick it my ear?” 

“No. Nobody sticks the coin in anyone’s ear. It’s never anywhere near your ear.” 

“Aha! Knew it. You’re betraying all your secrets now. Won’t you get kicked out of the magic circle?” 

“Oh, I was never in the magic circle,” said Aziraphale. “I think John Nevil Maskelyne was just humouring me, really. He had far more talented protégés than me. Such an inventive man. You should have seen it, Crowley. He did this act where he dressed up as a gorilla of all things, then he’d appear from inside a vanishing cabinet – dressed as a gorilla – and chased poor old Cooke all around the stage.” Crowley, now propped on one elbow, was giving him the look again, the one that was somewhere between pity and baffled adoration. “And of course Cooke was wearing a bonnet and a dress, which made the whole thing even more hilarious.” 

“I can’t even begin to explain the number of things that are wrong with you,” said Crowley. He pressed the coin into Aziraphale’s hand and started nuzzling again, one long, denimed thigh stretching across both of Aziraphale’s. “Do the thing.” 

“What…the Thing thing?” 

“No. The coin thing. I want to watch.” 

“Why? You hate my magic.” 

“Humour me,” said Crowley, in a growling bedroom voice that was every bit as intriguing as it was baffling. His usual reaction to Aziraphale’s magic was a near Greek chorus of ‘no, no, nooo’s, followed by cringing and occasionally threatening to turn into a snake. This was very different. His tongue was tracing whorls inside Aziraphale’s ear once more, and his thigh had moved higher, rubbing purposefully back and forth. Aziraphale was unconvinced he was even watching, but intrigue won out. He vanished the coin and turned his head to claim Crowley’s mouth, but Crowley drew back, smiling, teasing, even as his slight weight was riding Aziraphale’s hip and his interest was now very obvious. 

“Do you want to go to bed?” 

“No. We’re all right here. Keep going.” 

So it was a game. All right. He could play. This had the whiff of something Crowley had been thinking about for a while, like when he admitted that for over a century he’d fantasised about being roughly taken from behind on Aziraphale’s couch. “Like, one night it would just happen,” he’d said. “Probably when we’d been drinking. I’d make a move and you’d be all wide-eyed and ‘Oh, heavens – what are you doing?’ for all of about five seconds, and then you’d flip me over like a pancake and just… _wreck_ me. So hard and fast and dirty that I wouldn’t even have time to take my glasses off. They’d be sliding off the end of my nose when I came. And your fingers would be digging into my hips, and your belly and your balls _slapping_ up against my arse and…oh shit…I’m giving you quite a lot of detail here, aren’t I?” 

Crowley had always had an impressive imagination. It was one of the things Aziraphale had always admired about him. It had also been handy to have detailed instructions. The subsequent wreckage had been so satisfying that it had left them both craving a cigarette for the first time in over a decade. 

Aziraphale tried to concentrate on the coin. In truth, he’d never been very good at this, and he was no better now, with Crowley rubbing slowly against him and Crowley’s long, dexterous fingers – fingers that had touched him in places he hadn’t even known existed – plucking open the buttons of his trousers. When he tried to slide his other hand into the tight space between Crowley and his hip, Crowley murmured a soft ‘nuh-uh’ and gave his ear a punitive nip. 

“I used to have this fantasy,” Crowley said, as his hand deftly negotiated the gaps in clothes and underclothes and found Aziraphale hot and hard and wanting. “Of dissstracting you.” His tongue tickled. His hand _squeezed_. “When you were reading, or writing your little reports for Upstairsss.” His voice sounded like something sizzling, his power flowing in the fine, dark stream that always left Aziraphale breathless at its exquisite control. His hand moved with a practised touch, the pad of his thumb teasing the sensitive tip. 

“I’d crawl across the floor to you,” Crowley continued. “Sometimes clothed. Sometimes naked. Depended on my mood and how fast I wanted to come…” 

Aziraphale shuddered and arched, picturing Crowley writhing alone in the vast, stylish expanse of his old bed. The coin almost slipped from his fingers and Crowley hissed a soft warning, a reminder to keep going. This was the game now. He had to keep palming the coin while Crowley worked to distract him. 

“…you’d be sitting reading and I’d work my body between your feet. Push your knees apart. And you wouldn’t know what to do. You’d be so flustered you’d just pretend it wasn’t happening…” Oh, his hands were wicked, fingers at work on the buttons of Aziraphale’s waistcoat, and the shirt beneath. “…even though you would always, always open your legs for me.” 

Crowley was in full tempting flow now, black and sleek and voluptuous as satin on bare skin, deadly as quicksand to some, but not to Aziraphale, whose psychic tongue was attuned to seek out the bright burst of love in all the sticky, sweet, dark ooze of lust. And more, he’d inspired that love. He knew it intimately. He’d heard it in the feral, frantic ‘yes’ that had panted forth from Crowley’s lips the very first time Aziraphale had fucked him and felt him from the inside. He’d seen it in the way that the slits of Crowley’s pupils had expanded with his first slow, tentative thrusts, as if every part of Crowley was trying to dilate and take all of him in at once. And more. He’d seen something so beautiful and so _theirs_ that when Crowley had sworn him to secrecy about it Aziraphale’s joy at doing so had literally lit up the room. 

“You’d go right on reading,” Crowley whispered, flipping open shirt and waistcoat, baring Aziraphale to the ceiling. “But you couldn’t hide how fast you were breathing. Or the way you tensed when I bit the insides of your thighs…” His fingers dipped down again. “…and pulled you free…” 

“The blinds,” said Aziraphale, suddenly conscious of how indecent he must look, half unwrapped and erect on the floor of the bookshop. The blinds rolled down at Crowley’s unspoken command. Aziraphale arched into the touch of his hand and tried to reach for him again, but Crowley wasn’t bored of this game yet. 

“Keep it up,” Crowley said. “And don’t drop the coin on purpose. I’ll know.” 

“I need to…” 

“…shh. Don’t you want to know what happens next?” Crowley slithered downwards, his breath ruffling the hairs on Aziraphale’s lower belly. “You’d go right on reading while I touched you. You’d be trying so hard not to give in to me, even when I had you half naked, just like this. Proper little angel, still trying to be good even though I could see it, smell it…” He rubbed his cheek against the side of Aziraphale’s cock, the wet tip leaving a trail across his cheekbone. “…taste it…” Oh, his tongue now. “…taste how turned on you were. How much you wanted to just drop that book, grab my hair and push yourself into my mouth…” 

“Please…” The coin was somehow still balanced on the backs of Aziraphale’s fingers, but he’d given up all attempts to manipulate it any further. “ _Please_ let me touch you.” 

Crowley gave a low, soft laugh and teased with his tongue, flickering and lashing. “You knew,” he said, letting his breath cool the wet, tender skin before licking it hot all over again. “Even though you were a virgin in this fantasy, somehow you knew that I could suck you like nothing else on earth.” A loud, deliberate slurp. “But you were so good, you see. So good, angel…” 

Aziraphale dropped the coin. Crowley’s mouth closed around him, making him cry out, a low pitched wail that would have embarrassed him under any other circumstances, but right now was the only sound that came close to articulating the depths of both his relief and his unslaked need. Crowley’s tongue twisted and flickered, his slick lips tight, satisfying and tormenting all at once. Desperate to touch, Aziraphale reached down and grabbed two handfuls of Crowley’s hair, bucking as Crowley hummed around him in a sloppy, appreciative moan. He was so close, and he knew if he opened his eyes and looked down he would come. Crowley knew it too, because he slithered into Aziraphale’s head and whispered without using his lips, urging him to watch, watch, _watch_. 

Crowley’s lips were red and wet. His eyes looked like golden guineas, and they lit up as he met Aziraphale’s downward gaze and delivered the coup de grace, a flourish of guilt. ( _can’t control any of your appetites can you_ dirty _little angel rutting like an animal on the floor_ ) The shame was sudden and exquisite, licking up and down Aziraphale’s spine like a whip, igniting the last remaining sparks as it went. The roots of his wings ached and strained and his voice caught in the back of his throat, finally bursting out of him in a gasp as the slow motion explosion of his climax reached the point where the pleasure turned to pain. 

“Please, please…” he said, pulling Crowley’s hair in an attempt to escape his merciless mouth. “Let me touch you. _Please_ let me touch you.” 

He heard the barely-there static crackle of reality shifting gear and then Crowley was naked, all at once. Chest and thighs and red trimmed cock, all for the taking, an embarrassment of riches. Aziraphale pulled him up by his hair, and licked the sexy, oysterish taste from the inside of his mouth. All that skin and only two hands to touch with, but it would have to wait, because right now all he wanted was to make Crowley come. 

Crowley sat back on his heels, lip bitten, spine arched backwards as he sought the perfect angle. Aziraphale worked frantically, mesmerised by the swaybacked grace of him, the arch of his neck and the proximity of his pleasure. He watched as Crowley’s teeth released his lip in a low, breathless ‘fu-uck’, the first of many, bursting out of him in a rising, panting cadence as his prick jolted and his balls spilled over into Aziraphale’s fingers. 

His thighs shaking, Crowley drooped, his body unspeakably beautiful as it wilted down into Aziraphale’s embrace. “I could watch you come forever,” Aziraphale told him, and offered his lips and the tip of his tongue. Crowley’s tongue tasted burnt, the way it always did when they did this, pouring light into dark, Heaven into Hell, Aziraphale into Crowley. The contact lasted less than a second, because Crowley’s tongue immediately curled in a cry as he came again, this time so hard that his wings unfolded and knocked over a nearby end table. 

“My darling,” Aziraphale whispered, pulling him close, all thighs and feathers and trembling. Finally, all that bare skin was his to touch and kiss. Crowley’s breath rasped in his ear and he heard a dry catch in the back of Crowley’s throat that could have been part of an obscenity or an endearment or both. He caught Crowley’s lips again and kissed moisture back into his mouth, his still sticky hand on Crowley’s burning cheek. Such a mess, and yet the messiness was part of the satisfaction, like licking your fingers after polishing off an overfilled cream cake. 

Crowley furled his wings and shifted on his knees, one of which made a dull, unerotic crunching noise. “Ow,” he said, as he swung one thigh over Aziraphale and stretched out on his back beside him. “I think we might be a bit too old to be carrying on like young lovers.” 

“You were the one who wanted to do it on the floor.” 

“Yeah, I know. Please talk me out of that next time. We’ve got a very expensive mattress upstairs.” 

“I know, but this was obviously something you’d been thinking about, and you know I can’t help indulging you.” Aziraphale stretched his spine against the rug, conscious that he was neither warm nor comfortable. “Right. Bath, I think. Then bed.” 

Crowley laughed. 

“What’s so funny?” 

“You,” said Crowley. “Closing your bookshop so you can take me to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Just a handful of years ago you would have considered that absolutely _scandalous_.” 

Aziraphale got up from the floor. “A handful of years ago I didn’t have the luxury of taking you to bed at all, never mind in the middle of the afternoon.” He held out a hand to Crowley, who took it and pulled himself up. 

Crowley stretched and wriggled his spine, glancing around, as casual as if he’d been fully clothed. He sniffed. “Nothing on fire?” he said. 

“No. I think we did rather well, actually. All you did was knock over the table. That’s something of a new record, for us.” 

“Yeah, don’t hold your breath,” said Crowley. “We haven’t looked upstairs yet. You might have accidentally miracled the houseplants into a growth spurt.” 

Aziraphale laughed and wrapped his arms around Crowley’s tiny, bare waist. “You should see yourself right now. You look like every sexual fantasy I’ve ever had since I bought this place.” 

Crowley kissed him and grinned. “Not so bad yourself. You dropped the coin, though.” 

“Of course I did. You don’t leave me any time to practice these days.” 

“Oh. Is that why?” 

“Yes.” 

“Nothing to do with the fact that you’re bad at magic?” 

Aziraphale released him and swatted him lightly on the side of his thigh. “Run me a bath,” he said, retrieving the coin from the floor and dropping it into Crowley’s open palm. “I’ll make you regret that insult later.” 

“I’ll hold you to that.” 

Crowley disappeared upstairs, and Aziraphale set the end table to rights and picked up the scattered books. Afterwards he wandered back to his desk and removed a notebook from the drawer. It was an expensive notebook. The pale brown leather cover had the texture of fine suede, and the pages were creamy gold and had a pleasing, almost fleshy thickness to them, like vellum. It had been a gift from Crowley, and Aziraphale had kept it pristine for a long time, uncertain as to what he ought to write in such a beautiful notebook, that is until he’d finally gone to bed with Crowley and realised that everything he’d read about love and lust was no substitute for practical experience. 

Aziraphale had abandoned his ledgers, but he still made notes about Crowley. They were of a rather more intimate nature these days, things he had discovered in his earnest quest to become a better lover. Basic stuff at first, involving angles, lubrication, friction and so on, but his notes had rapidly become extremely personal to Crowley, like his fondness for scalp massages and how Aziraphale – simply by rubbing his thumbs quite hard against the outside edges of Crowley’s occipital bone – could make Crowley almost _purr_ , and turn his spine into an even more liquid state than it was already. 

He opened the notebook to the next blank page, and – just for old times’ sake – deviated from his usual specific style. 

_Extreme case of wiling on the part of the Demon Crowley. Unfortunately for him, I know magic, and thwarted him satisfactorily using nothing more than a little sleight of hand._

* * *

Sometimes Aziraphale found himself wondering what it was that he’d even done with himself before he’d been in love with Crowley. Their affair spilled over into every aspect of Aziraphale’s life. It had long since escaped the bedroom and taken over the kitchen, where Crowley devoted himself to the acquisition of knives and ludicrously expensive saucepans. It manifested itself in the form of things Aziraphale was sure he’d never enjoy, like HBO and strange sugary coffee concoctions with ANGEL written on the side of the cup. “I mean, I _could_ make the barista write out your full name,” Crowley said. “But I’ve got better things to do with my time, and even I’m not that much of a bastard.” 

Crowley had settled into the spaces of the bookshop, by way of his anxious houseplants and that suggestive statue that made customers raise their eyebrows. “They’re _wrestling_ ,” Crowley would snarl. “Why does everyone leap to the conclusion that they’re doing something else?” 

“The aggressive amount of grinding that seems to be involved?” Aziraphale said, drifting by with a fresh cup of tea. “The infinite opportunities for frottage?” 

“They’re wrestling. Greco-Roman wrestling.” 

“What, like Achilles and Patroclus?” 

“Yes.” 

“Alexander and Hephaestion?” 

“Shut up,” said Crowley, catching on. 

“Hadrian and Antinous. Apollo and Hyacinthus. Hercules and Hylas…stop me if you’ve had enough, won’t you?”

“You have no concept of art,” said Crowley, looking thunderous. “It’s…it’s disgusting to me. You’ve never even heard of Andy Warhol, and all of a sudden you’re an art critic?” 

“No,” said Aziraphale, thoroughly enjoying himself by now. “But I do have eyes and I know what rough sex looks like. And it looks a lot like that. Honestly, Crowley – how is it that you’re not shy about giving me a guided tour of your most detailed sexual fantasies, and yet you can’t admit that you bought a pornographic statue because it reminded you of me?” 

“My statue,” said Crowley. “Is not pornographic. They’re _fighting_.” 

“Right. Mortal adversaries.” 

“Yep.” 

“In a fight to the death.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“With just a little bit of adversarial…penetration.” 

Crowley gave him a long, glacial look. “There is _not_ penetration,” he said, and pretended to be very interested in his phone for a moment. Aziraphale went on reading, waiting, until Crowley finally cracked and went to take a closer look at the statue. “It’s just the way it’s carved,” Crowley said, as Aziraphale fought to keep a straight face. “It’s a bridge, in the marble. Sculpture one-oh-one.” 

“Whatever you say, dear.” 

Crowley pouted about it for the space of an hour or so, then eventually followed Aziraphale upstairs to the bathroom, yet another space that had yielded to coupledom. It was one of the few areas of the flat that Aziraphale had always kept fairly tidy, fond as he was of evenings levitating the newspaper or a paperback novel above the suds of a nice, relaxing bath. 

At first Crowley had skulked around the edges of the bathroom, concerned that Aziraphale’s presence might have accidentally sanctified the bathwater and therefore rendered it lethal. Aziraphale reminded him that they’d shared the odd plunge pool back in the day, and – on one spectacularly alcoholic night in Venice – the same canal, but recent graphic demonstrations of the power of holy water had left Crowley still somewhat wary. It was only after carrying out several nervous experiments involving industrial rubber gloves, Aziraphale’s bathwater and his own demonic toenail clippings that Crowley began to relax, and even then he would only enter the bathroom to sit on the toilet lid and talk to Aziraphale from a safe distance. 

Eventually, though, he would venture closer to the tub to refill Aziraphale’s wine glass or bring him an Old Fashioned, until repeated accidental splashings had assured him there was no danger. And then that was that. The bathroom had been the last room to fall to their new, settled domesticity, and Crowley had settled in with a vengeance, bringing with him his hair products, nail lacquers and aggressive exfoliants. 

Tonight he brought gin fizzes, because he’d been messing around with crème brulee and had the egg whites left over. The tray hovered beside the tub as Crowley slipped out of his black silk robe and into the other end of the bath. There was always room, although Aziraphale was never clear whether that was down to the capacious nature of Edwardian bathtubs or Crowley’s tendency to stretch the laws of physics to breaking point. 

“Anything good?” Crowley asked, as he settled into the water, wincing pleasurably at the heat. 

Aziraphale turned back the page of the newspaper and took his drink from the tray. “There’s a new place in Mayfair that Jay Rayner’s been raving about. Bone marrow crackers. Not sure how that works, but I’ll try anything once.” Aziraphale sipped and sighed happily. Just the right side of sour. “Mm…you spoil me rotten.” 

“Goes both ways,” said Crowley. “You can give me multiple orgasms using nothing but the tip of your tongue.” He fished the cherry out of his gin fizz and the bright red against his lips made his eyes look almost green. He had pushed his damp hair back from his forehead and a drift of foam was slowly dispersing among the carefully tousled pillarbox strands. Spellbound, Aziraphale leaned forward and they clinked glasses, stole a kiss, before settling back in their respective ends of the bathtub, knees touching. 

Aziraphale folded the newspaper in midair and let it drop down onto the bathmat. “You know, you never did tell me,” he said. “How your sexual fantasy ended.” 

“Which one? I have a lot of sexual fantasies.” 

“The one about distracting me.” 

“Ah. Right. Well, in that particular case what would happen is that you’d look down at me, kneeling on the floor with my mouth full…” 

“…right…” 

“…and then you’d push your totally pointless reading glasses back up onto your nose, turn the page and say, ‘Make sure you get that good and wet, Crowley, because it’s going right up your arse in a minute.’” 

Aziraphale let out a small, shocked laugh. “I don’t sound like that.” 

“Oh, you do. You’d be all prim and proper, right up to the moment where you pulled my hair, came in my mouth and told me you loved me. Then you’d throw me down on the couch and fuck me until I cried.” 

Aziraphale stared. “Is this really what’s been going on in your head for the past six thousand years?” 

“On and off, yeah,” said Crowley. “While you were off learning stupid coin tricks I was refining the art of masturbation to the point where I spent a large part of the eighteenth century with permanent calluses.” 

“Why? What happened in the eighteenth century?” 

“High heels,” said Crowley. “Knee breeches. Tight stockings.” Beneath the suds his hand slithered up the back of Aziraphale’s calf. “You’ve got lovely legs.” 

“Do you really think so?” said Aziraphale, flattered by this compliment coming from the owner of two of the most perfect legs in history. This was Crowley, who could make Aziraphale stupid simply by crossing and uncrossing his legs or snaking his slender hips from side to side. Crowley, with his Venetian red hair and endlessly expressive eyebrows, and eyes that put Aziraphale in mind of Yeats’s lines about gold mosaics and Byzantium. And here he was, drinking gin fizzes in the bathtub as they traded smiles and kisses, his hand on Aziraphale’s leg and the juniper on his breath mingling with the jasmine of the bubble bath. 

“Are we ridiculous?” Aziraphale said, as Crowley’s hand moved and curled wet around the nape of his neck, bringing him even closer. 

“What do you mean?” Crowley’s tongue swiped over his lower lip, teeth scraping in a gentle bite. 

“This. We seem to spend all of our time drinking and gazing at each other,” Aziraphale said, returning the kiss. “Besotted.” 

“Yup.” Crowley teased his lips apart, seeking a deeper, wetter kiss, one that Aziraphale was only too happy to grant him. Crowley’s fingers were on Aziraphale’s cheek now, the silk inside his wrist so close that Aziraphale had to try to kiss that, too, even though his mouth was already occupied. No wonder humans were so obsessed with this, this endless, barely slaked wanting. He didn’t seem to have enough hands with which to touch or lips with which to kiss, and even when he was actually _inside_ Crowley, reaching into him over and over and calling his name, he couldn’t help thinking of poor dear Oscar, and his definition of a perfect pleasure as one that left one still unsatisfied. 

“It’s quite ridiculous,” he said, between breathless, clutching kisses. “You have to admit.” 

“Oh yes,” said Crowley, almost spilling his gin into the bathtub. “I am…” Kiss. “…ridiculously…” Kiss. “…in love…with you.” 

“I love you so much. I never want this ridiculousness to end.” 

In the spring evening they wandered hand in hand through Covent Garden, headed for a seafood place in Henrietta Street that did interesting things with oysters. The tourist crowds were beginning to thin out a little and the street performers were packing away, including a man dressed as a natty angel, with gold top hat and spats. 

“Don’t you think that’s clever?” Aziraphale said, as they passed. “Those levitation tricks they do?” 

“Not really,” said Crowley. “I thought it was just a steel pole with a sort of seat welded to it.” 

“Oh, it is. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about the illusion. The suspension of disbelief. You should have seen it, Crowley. The first night that Maskelyne and Cooke performed that illusion. They didn’t just levitate Cooke. They levitated the whole sarcophagus beneath him. The equipment alone weighed about four hundred pounds. The audience couldn’t believe their eyes. And the reaction from all the other magicians who weren’t in the know…oh, they were tearing their hair out trying to work out how the Chief had done it.” 

“Let me guess,” said Crowley. “A small piece of light miracling?” 

“No! Absolutely not. It was pure human ingenuity. A father and son job. His son Nevil was the one who came up with the gooseneck equipment, and the Chief was the one who worked out how to make the whole rig rise. Caused a huge sensation. The Americans were livid.” 

“Why?” 

“Because Maskelyne wouldn’t sell the effect,” said Aziraphale, as they entered the restaurant. “The American magician Harry Kellar was desperate to get his hands on the secrets. There was actual espionage going on. Agents and double agents. The whole thing was absurd. You would have enjoyed the farce of it even if the magic tricks had left you cold.” 

“Which they would,” said Crowley. 

The oysters proved as interesting as advertised, tempura style with champagne aioli and red caviar. Crowley ordered the Laurent Perrier rosé – “Because we were drinking rosé the first time you kissed me.” – and Aziraphale went pinker than the champagne. It was doubly romantic because Crowley tactfully neglected to mention that his head had been partly on fire during their first kiss, and that the fire had been mostly Aziraphale’s fault. 

“You know what I think it is?” Crowley said, when the conversation meandered back round, the way it often did. “With you and your magic tricks?” 

Aziraphale, who had resigned himself to garlic breath being a feature of the evening, slurped the white wine sauce from a mussel shell. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” 

“Lying. I think you enjoy the lying.” 

“Is that right?” 

“Yup,” said Crowley, sitting back, as if seeking the perfect distance from which to exude smugness. “You’re not supposed to lie. You’re not _allowed_ to lie.” 

“Nevertheless, I have.” 

“A recent development. And you love it. No, don’t look at me like that. You do.” Crowley sipped his champagne. “But a hundred or so years ago? You were still a lot more conscientious, which is why you started knocking around with magicians.” 

“Knocking around?” 

“Magic gave you the opportunity to lie harmlessly. For fun. The whitest of lies. You could lie as much as you like and wouldn’t so much as soil a single feather of your pure white wings.” 

Aziraphale shook his head. “You really think I’m that straightforward?” 

“I think,” said Crowley. “That deep down, you enjoy deception.” 

“Crowley, really. I’m hurt.” Oh, this was delicious. They’d been flirting forever, of course, but now they could genuinely enjoy it. Aziraphale rinsed his fingertips and took a long sip of champagne. “All right,” he said. “Cards on the table time. Do you want to know what _I_ think _you_ enjoy?” 

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.” 

“Altruism,” said Aziraphale, making it sound as obscene as humanly possible. 

Crowley gave a soft, theatrical gasp. 

“Kindness,” said Aziraphale. “Simple human decency.” 

Crowley sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and exhaled. “Careful, Aziraphale. Those are fighting words.” 

“Backed up with centuries of evidence, my dear. The flowers. The chocolates. The bottles of wine.” 

“I was trying to get into your angelic pants.” 

“And now you’re in them,” said Aziraphale. “And where you have proved to be an astonishingly gentle and generous lover.”

“Shut up. I’m a lust crazed hell beast.” 

“Really? I wasn’t aware that lust crazed hell beasts _cuddled_.” 

Crowley arched an eyebrow. “Some of us do,” he said. “Depends entirely on the hell beast. You can’t tar us all with the same brush. And I’ll have you know that I’ve performed acts of shocking iniquity that have involved – on occasion – some light, discretionary cuddling.” 

“Is that so?” 

“It is. I own it. I’m not ashamed of it. In fact, under the correct circumstances, cuddling can be astonishingly evil.” 

“Which circumstances, exactly?” said Aziraphale, batting his eyelashes. “Like when you push your bare bum into my lap, kiss the palm of my hand and tell me how much you love it when I let you be the little spoon?” 

Crowley glared, but there wasn’t much malice to it. “You’re such a bastard.” 

“And you’re such a sweetheart.” 

When they got back to the bookshop, Aziraphale lingered downstairs for a while. He wanted to check his report ledgers again, to refresh his memory. 1901, if he remembered rightly – the year that Maskelyne’s levitation act had delighted London audiences and left fellow magicians scratching their heads. All that espionage and intrigue. It had all been very exciting and gloriously showbiz, but when Aziraphale looked at his reports he couldn’t seem to relive that excitement. He’d been writing more to amuse himself than anything else, because Upstairs obviously didn’t give a single damp toss about the skulduggery of human magicians. 

He’d been much more sociable back in those days, too, as evidenced by the names discreetly pencilled here and there in the margins – Susie, Amanda, Georgette. The old club had closed, but the social life had rumbled on regardless. All those green carnations and consolations, champagne and off-colour jokes. A time of discovery and excitement and innovation, and yet there – again – was that odd sensation of something frantic. A fluttering disquiet that oscillated – barely glimpsed but absolutely present – within the neat loops of his own handwriting. And there, at the bottom of every page, was his official filing. Three words. 

_Nothing to report._

He went upstairs to bed, where Crowley was waiting, leafing through a cookbook and sipping from a couple of fingers of Laphroaig. “There you are,” he said. “Starting to think you’d gone off me.” 

“Not possible, my darling.” 

Aziraphale started to undress, both self-conscious and thrilled by the way that Crowley’s large, yellow eyes followed him around the bedroom as he did so. The first time Aziraphale had snapped his clothes off in one go and discovered – by way of Crowley’s raised eyebrow – that this was the wrong way to go about these things. “It’s like the reason why people wrap gifts,” Crowley had said. “For the pleasure of tearing it off. Stupid, really, but _so_ satisfying.” 

“Do you ever have those times,” said Aziraphale, as he hung up his shirt. “Where you look back at a moment where you were sure you were having a lovely time, but then you find you can’t seem to remember exactly _what_ it was that made it so lovely?” 

Crowley squinted in thought for a long moment. “Uhh…usually alcohol, I find,” he said. “Tends to account for both the good times and the amnesia.” 

“No, I’m not talking about being drunk.” 

“Then what are you on about?” 

“I’m not sure,” said Aziraphale. He perched on the edge of the bed to remove his socks. “Something is creaking in the rattling pipework of my ancient mental processes, but I’m far too old and tipsy to put my finger on it right now.” He turned his head, following the scent of whiskey, and found something even more intoxicating. Crowley, warm and cosy and bared completely. No glasses, even. His eyes were the same deep gold as the aged single malt, his lips still wet from the last sip. One of those moments Aziraphale would always remember with perfect clarity, mostly because he could hardly believe that it was real. 

Aziraphale reached for the glass in Crowley’s hand. Crowley surrendered it with a weary click of his tongue. “I asked you if you wanted one.” 

“I want some of yours,” said Aziraphale, delighted to be a nuisance. He sipped and handed the glass back, already looking forward to that first naked plunge between the sheets. 

“You were always stealing bites off my plate,” Crowley complained, as Aziraphale slipped under the duvet beside him. 

“So were you. It was your fault. You always had this unholy knack of ordering what I _really_ wanted instead of the thing I thought I should have.” 

“Oh, that’s nice. Blame the victim.” 

“You were never the victim, you fiend. You knew exactly what kind of mischief you were working every time you ordered the tiramisu.” 

“We could have shared,” said Crowley, offering him the last sip of whiskey. “I like sharing.” He tipped the glass and Aziraphale swallowed, shuddering at the smouldery burn of the alcohol. Crowley liked his single malts to be smoky. 

“Not very demonic, is it?” said Aziraphale, as they snuggled down beneath the covers, toes tussling and ankles tangling. “Sharing, I mean. Greed. Now that’s the deadly sin you were _supposed_ to be upholding.” 

Crowley pushed, rolling Aziraphale onto his back. “Do you really want to bait me right now?” 

“Why? What are you going to do to me?” 

Crowley’s fingers skated over the ticklish sides of Aziraphale’s ribs. “Oh, you know what I’m going to do,” he said, trying and failing to look menacing. “Something monstrous.” 

“No…” 

“…oh yes. Something atrociously evil.” 

“No, I beg you. Please. Anything but that.” 

“Nope, you’ve done it now,” said Crowley. “I’m going to have to get seriously satanic in here. I’m afraid that you, angel, are about to experience the worst excesses of Hell’s most accomplished cuddler.” 

* * *

Aziraphale was still getting to grips with sleep and its side effects. Like dreaming. Most of the time he dreamed about Crowley, although last summer the first sign that things were getting out of hand were when he woke up to find Crowley basking happily in a roof garden that hadn’t existed when Aziraphale had closed his eyes. 

After having established that neither of them had miracled the thing into existence, Aziraphale had struggled to recall his dream and realised that he was probably responsible. To Crowley’s lasting chagrin, the roof terrace had disappeared by late afternoon, dispersing like fog. 

“It’s a dream. They’re ephemeral by nature, I suppose,” Aziraphale had said. “I think I might just read a book while you sleep. It’s probably safer.” 

“Yeah, never mind safe. Next time dream me a fucking hot tub. I want to top up my tan while drinking ice cold Mojitos in forty five degree water.” 

Other times, like last night, his emotions would sometimes bleed out while he slept. His sleep had been unsettled, a return of that unnamed oscillation that made his forehead ache with the constancy of his frown, and made his human heart beat with hummingbird wings in his sleep. Crowley had felt it, too, and woken up with a start, before sinking back down into a doze and pulling Aziraphale closer to him with a thoughtless tenderness that made the love-light of Heaven seem dim by comparison. 

Aziraphale returned to his old ledgers, the ones dating from the early twentieth century, when there had been magic abroad in the air. David Devant’s moth effect, where a girl dressed as a beautiful moth wrapped her wings around herself and disappeared into thin air. He’d seen Harry Houdini at the Hippodrome, and had been ready to be unimpressed by the brash young American, but Houdini had risen to the challenge and escaped the handcuffs. Such a small man, but with a personality that could fill a room. And Bess Houdini had been even smaller, an elfin little creature barely five feet tall. Oh, and Chung Ling Soo, with that wonderful goldfish effect, where he’d cast a fishing line into the audience, conjured fish out of nowhere and then dropped them – alive and swimming – into a crystal fish bowl beside him on the stage. That had been a roaring success. His bullet catch trick…less so. 

Age had blunted the edge of Aziraphale’s memory, which is to say it still had the kind of edge that would have made a sushi chef or a surgeon extremely excited, but was perhaps no longer up to the job of cutting diamonds. Now he lingered over a note that made him frown – _1912\. Waiting At The Church_ – but he frowned only for a moment. Memory seized him by the scruff of the neck and shook him, as if about to toss him into the page and through time itself.

* * *

“… _can’t get away to marry you today, my wife won’t let me_.” The dustman delivered the last lines of the music hall chorus with relish, and started all over again. It was an unseasonably damp May morning and Aziraphale shivered as he closed the door to shut out the sound. A slender figure lay curled on the couch, solicitously covered with a shawl. Poor Elsie. No idea what the matter was, but they still came here, and it was probably time to put a stop to it. Oscar was gone and the Hundred Guineas Club was, too. It had been almost thirty years since that first night, when someone had thrust a champagne glass into his hand, admired his angelic curls and – when he gave his name, or what passed for it – shrieked in mock outrage. “Oh no, cherub. We can’t call you Ezra. That’s not how we do things around here. You see, this is Margot, and this is Lucy and – don’t stare too hard, I _know_ , dear – _that’s_ Victoria. Now. What are we going to call _you_?” 

Aziraphale had looked out at this brave new world with such people in it, and said the first thing that popped into his head. “Is anyone using the name Miranda?” 

And that was that. Someone tipped a glass of champagne over his head in lieu of holy water and rebaptised him Miranda, and he hadn’t even minded the stains on his coat, because everyone was so _friendly_. They complimented him on his perfect teeth and pretty smile, and some of them even flirted. He’d got so caught up in their lives, in their love affairs and jealousies and yearnings that as time went on and the men seemed to get younger and younger, they took to calling him Auntie or Mother, but of course he’d never grown any older. 

That was why it had to end, he realised, as he filled the kettle and set it to boil on the little spirit lamp in the back room. He couldn’t keep going on like this. He couldn’t stay here, unchanging and attracting attention. “I suspect the portrait in _your_ attic would burn the eyes out of the sockets of mere mortals,” Oscar had once said, with uncanny prescience. “It must be hideous beyond conception.” 

The dustman was still singing, and Aziraphale could still hear it. “… _when he used to take me in the park, he used to squeeze me ‘til I was black and blue. When he kissed me he used to leave a mark..._ ” 

St. James’s Park. The coiled snake mark next to his ear, lost in the fur of a Victorian sideburn. Fraternizing. Even as the word had left his lips Aziraphale had known he’d said the wrong thing, but the punishment hardly fitted the crime. 

“… _and there I was, waiting at the church, waiting at the church, waiting at the church_ …” 

He took the tea back into the bookshop, set it down on a table and bent over the curled figure on the couch. “Elsie…Elsie, dear. Brought you a nice cup of tea.” 

Elsie stirred and stretched out his long limbs. He had the lanky, stretched look of a recent growth spurt, and while he reeked of gin his large brown eyes were still bright and clear. Human youth was so resilient. It was such a shame it lasted only the blink of an eye. 

“What time is it?” he said. 

“Rather later than it should be,” said Aziraphale. “You were in quite a state last night.” He handed him the tea. “What happened, dear? Tell Mother.” 

Elsie’s eyes filled with tears all over again. “I got drunk. And acted like an idiot.” 

“Well, that part I was there for,” said Aziraphale, handing him a handkerchief. “Before that. You said something about Jack?” 

Handsome Jack. He and Elsie had been at Harrow together, where things had happened. And then onto Oxford, where they’d kept happening, until Jack had gone off on a grand tour of Europe, ostensibly ‘to think’. Aziraphale had a funny feeling he knew what happened next. 

“He’s coming back to England,” said Elsie, and let out a loud, unlovely sob. Aziraphale got up from his chair and joined the boy on the sofa. “He’s _married_.” 

“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale put an arm around Elsie’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I’m so sorry.” 

“She’s an American timber heiress. Filthy rich. I could live with it if were just about that, but he says they’re in love. That she’s changed him. _Cured_ him. And that we need to forget about everything that happened between us, because it wasn’t really love. It was just…just something that happened whenever we bumped into each other. And that it didn’t really mean anything.” 

Aziraphale pressed his nose into the young man’s hair, grateful for the storm of sobs that meant he didn’t have to look at him in that moment. Fraternizing. Oh, you stupid, stupid angel. “It sounds to me that you’re better off without him,” he said. “You’ll look back and realise you had a lucky escape.” 

Elsie only cried harder. Aziraphale darted a nervous look at the grandfather clock as he soothed and sighed. It was getting on for time and it would take him a good half an hour to walk to the park. That was when he realised that there was a hand on his thigh. And it was moving purposefully upwards. 

“Please,” said Elsie, and kissed him. 

The young man’s lips were soft, and sour with last night’s gin, but Aziraphale was too startled to do anything but respond, out of reflex more than anything else. He’d been kissed before, of course, but he’d always stopped himself before things got out of hand. It had even been a bit of a joke, back in the day. “Saint Miranda,” they used to say. “What would it take to get _her_ halo to slip, I wonder?” 

His body responded in spite of himself, and that was when he knew he had to call a halt to it, because he had no right to pour six thousand years worth of loneliness into this poor little mayfly creature. “Stop,” he said, quietly, then more firmly. “ _Stop_. You don’t want to do this.” 

“I do,” said Elsie. “I just need…I need someone to touch me. Hold me. Tell me I’m not a monster.” 

“You’re not a monster,” said Aziraphale. “And I’m flattered, I really am, but I’m far too old for you.” 

“You’re not _that_ old.” 

“I’m a lot older than I look. Besides, I…” Can’t. Mustn’t. Not even human. “I can’t…” 

Elsie touched the winged ring on Aziraphale’s little finger, and when he looked up again there was a new understanding in his eyes. “There’s someone, isn’t there?” he said. 

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Yes, there is.” 

“Someone who makes your heart feel as though it could sprout wings and fly?” 

“Not exac…” Aziraphale swallowed hard. “Yes. I suppose so. I haven’t seen him in a while.” He glanced at the clock. “As a matter of fact I was supposed to meet him. Today. And quite soon.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m keeping you.” 

“It’s all right, dear. Drink your tea. But I’m afraid I must get ready.” 

They walked down to Trafalgar Square together, where they parted. Aziraphale carried on down Whitehall and into St. James’s Park. The morning mist had burned off and the sun was shining brightly, just as it had fifty years ago when everything had gone so horribly wrong. Aziraphale opened the paper bag he’d brought with him and began to feed the descendants of the ducks he’d been feeding that bright May day in 1862. 

He fed them until the bag was empty. Then he sat down on a bench and waited. And waited. And as he waited, the dustman’s song burrowed deeper into his head. 

_When I’d found he’d left me in the lurch,_

_Lor’, how it did upset me!_

_All at once, he sent round a note_

_Here’s the very note,_

_This is what he wrote…_

Holy water. Two words. Fifty years. “Fifty years,” Aziraphale said, under his breath, as he finally rose from the bench. “Fifty bloody years, Crowley.”

* * *

Aziraphale’s official report for the 7th May 1912 was just five words. 

_No wiles. Getting slightly concerned._

“Oi.” A yawn. A shuffle of bare feet. The smell of powerful coffee. Aziraphale blinked back into the present, but once again Crowley had taken on the hallucinatory quality of a thing yearned for too long and too intensely. He carried coffee in one hand and tea in the other, his bright red hair sticking up in absurd peaks and horns. No glasses, no shoes, the way he had been in Eden, with his strange eyes and scaly toes on unselfconscious display. He set the drinks down, buried his nose in the back of Aziraphale’s neck and set about saying hello with a series of growly smacking kisses on the nape of Aziraphale’s neck and behind his ears. 

“ _What_ are you doing down here? Why aren’t you in bed with me? It’s Sunday, for God’s sake.” He planted a long hard kiss on the side of Aziraphale’s neck. “Farting around with dusty old books. You could be in bed right now. _We_ could be in bed. You could be banging me like a shithouse door right now.” 

Aziraphale laughed. “I can honestly say, in all my long existence, that I have never banged a shithouse door. Or understood that simile.” 

Crowley’s chin dug into his shoulder. “What are you reading?” 

“Oh…notes. Thwartings, mostly.” 

“You kept notes on your thwartings?” Crowley pulled up a chair, interested. 

“Well, I had to report to head office, didn’t I?” 

Crowley peered into the ledgers. “I wasn’t even around for half of this,” he said. “You actually submitted this?” He scanned the page, frowning. “This is just a whole thing about how you got pissed with Robbie Ross and had a massive bitching session about Lord Alfred Douglas.” 

“No, obviously I didn’t submit that upstairs,” said Aziraphale. “That was just for my personal reference.” He pointed out the line below. “ _That_ was the official report.” 

“‘Very pleasant evening. Unfortunately no wiles required thwarting. Again.’ Unfortunately?” Crowley arched an eyebrow. “Did you miss me?” 

_Miss you?_ Aziraphale stared at him, barely able to process the understatement. 

Crowley went on reading. “‘Possible demonic presence reported in Shoreditch, but on examination turned out to be a particularly pungent blocked drain. Demon Crowley still missing.’” He glanced up from the ledger. “Aziraphale, there is no way you got off your arse to check out a drain just because someone said it smelled like Hell. You once spent an entire week on the couch trying to decide if you could be bothered to get up and make a cup of tea.” 

“I had to file something,” said Aziraphale. 

Crowley’s eyes were enormous. “So you just _lied_?” 

“On occasion, yes. I may have…embroidered.” 

“Embroidered? Angel, this is the fucking Bayeux Tapestry of bullshit. Look at this. You filed ‘All night vigil in Highgate Cemetery,’ when your actual report says you were doing what you were usually doing in the late nineteenth century, which is hanging around Piccadilly, watching people who had lonely childhoods pull doves and rabbits out of their clothing.” Crowley scrubbed a hand over his open mouth. “You _lied_ to Heaven? If they’d caught you…” 

“But they didn’t,” said Aziraphale. “I was too far down the pecking order. They were barely paying attention.” 

“And if they _had_ paid attention? You would have been _toast_ , Aziraphale. Literally.” 

“I told you. I had to file something. They would have been a lot more suspicious if I hadn’t filed reports. And what was I supposed to file anyway? The truth? ‘Demon Crowley still sulking up a storm because I refused to bring him a suicide pill’?” 

“Sure, why not?” said Crowley. “‘My demon boyfriend was sulking, so I put on my dancing shoes and went cavorting with the A-list gays of London. Then I tried to learn magic, and went to the music hall, and generally had a lovely time’…” 

“A lovely time?” said Aziraphale, and there it was at last. That oscillating restlessness that had plagued him for almost a century. “Really?” 

“You _liked_ the nineteenth century.” 

“Because I _had_ to,” said Aziraphale, getting up from his chair. “For God’s sake, Crowley, don’t be so obtuse. I was dancing and doing magic tricks and making friends because they were the only things keeping me sane during those years.” His throat was already starting to ache with unshed tears, but these were the words he’d been trying to say all along and they had to come out. “Every single day when I didn’t know where you were was torture. And every single day you were missing, I loved you more. And you know what the really stupid thing is?” 

Crowley shook his head, his eyes gold fire. 

“I didn’t even know it. No, wait – I _did_ know it. I did. But I’m so utterly pigheaded that I didn’t let myself entertain the thought. I seized on every last distraction I could to keep from thinking about how much I ached for you when you were gone.” 

Crowley was on his feet now, his hands on Aziraphale’s face. 

“No, don’t kiss me,” Aziraphale said, frantic with his need to keep talking. “Not yet. Please let me say this first. I have to tell you, Crowley. I have to. When I was standing in the ruins of that bombed out church, and your hand touched mine…oh, my darling. I didn’t fall in love. I…I nose-dived. I plunged. I think, looking back, I’d been plunging quietly since 1862. Or earlier. I don’t know, exactly. All I knew was that it was inevitable. And ineffable. And it was agony, because I knew I could never ever have you.” 

“Shh…” Crowley kissed him, slow, soft and claiming, the way Aziraphale had wanted to be kissed in 1941. And 1912. And 1862. Or any other number of years he had yet to examine, sifting between the lines of his own handwriting to determine his real feelings. “You can have me now. Any way you want me.” Crowley’s mouth tasted of coffee, the tips of his fingers making soft scraping noises as they traced the shapes of Aziraphale’s ears. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. Anything you want.” 

“Take me to bed,” said Aziraphale, finally saying the thing he’d wanted to say when he’d sat beside Crowley in the car, seedy sixties neon blinking all around them. “Take me to bed and fuck me.” 

He wasn’t sure how they got upstairs, or how they ended up naked. Crowley might have even miracled them there, too impatient for unwrapping, but the how didn’t matter. All that mattered was the why and the now, the panting heat of open mouths, the clutch of hands and the simple, urgent hungers of flesh and heart. 

“You okay?” Crowley whispered, considerate even in spite of a generous slither of unconsecrated oil. He was long rather than thick, and stretched the tissues too delicately for Aziraphale’s taste. 

“Yes. Please. Hard. I want it hard.” 

But he still moved too carefully, rocking his hips with a solicitude that made Aziraphale slightly ashamed of his own rough, greedy thrusts whenever their positions were reversed. Aziraphale hitched his knees higher and gripped the sides of Crowley’s ribs, concentrating on the stirring, slow-pounding rhythm rising inside him. If it had been the other way around Crowley would have been hissing a dark stream of sticky filth and sexy shame by now, but Aziraphale had no such talents to urge his lover on. All he had were hands and hips and a hunger that cried out for more. 

“There,” Aziraphale said, as the tip of Crowley’s cock skated over that place inside him, the one that was like scratching the most delicious itch in the world. “ _There_. Please. Harder.” 

Crowley made a choked gasping sound and threw his head back, eyes closed, lips parted. 

“I want to be sore,” said Aziraphale, grinding up against him. “Please. I want to be bruised. I want to be _wrecked_.” 

“Oh fuck…” Crowley opened his eyes, looked down at him like he was salvation and plunged forward, hips pounding. Aziraphale moaned, riding his thrusts, half mad at the riot of sensations inside him and yet still somehow not mad enough. 

“That’s it,” he whispered, his hand in Crowley’s hair. “Fuck me. Come on. Fuck me like I don’t know I’m yours. Show me, darling. Show me.” 

Crowley cried out, his face buried in Aziraphale’s shoulder, his skin slick and his hips moving like he was trying to fuck Aziraphale’s heart into his mouth. “I love you,” he said, and said it again and again and again, in time with the motion of their bodies until he could no longer keep up. When his voice cracked, so did Aziraphale, and there wasn’t even time to stick a finger in Crowley’s mouth to make him come, because Crowley came with him perfectly, the human way, poundy and messy and trivial and transcendent all at once. 

“I love you so much,” Aziraphale told him, his lips against Crowley’s sweating temple as they sank down into the soft, quiet bliss of aftermath. Crowley was shaking, and Aziraphale tasted salt. Here was the secret, the one he’d been sworn to: that when it was this sweet and fierce and tender between them, Crowley would cry when he came. Aziraphale harvested the tears with little licks of his tongue. Crowley made one of his soft, incoherent noises and sank down on his side, and Aziraphale turned to face him, curling in close with his mouth against Crowley’s forehead, letting the hairs of his eyebrows tickle his lips. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

He felt Crowley’s brow furrow under his lips, and Crowley looked up. “What for?” 

“Oh, you know. Just about everything. The rescues, the miracles, the drunken nights, preferring to stand outside a theatre with me instead of going to see the really dirty play you wanted to see.” 

“Meh,” said Crowley. “It probably wasn’t even that dirty.” 

“Darling, it was a Restoration comedy. It was never going to be anything other than filthy.” 

Crowley’s hand moved over Aziraphale’s hip, squeezing gently. “Yeah, I’m over it. Besides, you’re filthy enough. I’m not sure I could handle much more filth in my life right now. Not without my balls exploding.” 

“You think I’m filthy?” 

“Yep.” Crowley nipped his bottom lip. “You’re my filthy, dirty, sexy little angel.” 

“And you’re my cuddly, sentimental, adoring little demon,” said Aziraphale, and caught himself at it. Baby talking a demon. “And we really are completely ridiculous, aren’t we?” 

“Totally,” said Crowley, laughing and pulling the covers over both their heads. “Shamelessly. Utterly ridiculous. I love it.”

**Author's Note:**

> * After decades of civil wars and putting up with the Thou Shalt Nottings of a series of increasingly Puritan parliaments, everyone was in the mood for some honest, good old-fashioned smut. Few artists have ever answered the desires of their audience quite as adeptly as Restoration dramatists did.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading and for commenting!


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